The Guardian Culture

Ian McEwan says pessimism ‘a bigger problem than climate change’

Speaking at Hay festival as UK breaks May heat record, author says optimism is a ‘moral duty’Pessimism is probably “a bigger problem than climate change”, said the novelist Ian McEwan on Monday afternoon, as temperatures broke May records in the UK.McEwan “constantly” hears people say that they don’t “expect their children to have as good a life as they did”, but suggested that optimism is a “moral duty”. Continue reading...

entertainment  May 25, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Thespians review – world’s first actor gets comic kudos from Mischief’s merrymakers

Mercury theatre, ColchesterThis musical from the company behind The Play That Goes Wrong unearths the invention of acting in ancient Greece – and finds little has changedThe Mischief theatre company has been making fun of actors’ foibles for years, especially in the deliriously amusing Goes Wrong series. Its first musical asks if all those rampaging egos, heated rivalries, creative differences and hammy activities can be dated back to the world’s very first acting troupe. Did the proto-thespians

entertainment  May 25, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Criminal review – homelessness show delivers a rage-making punch in the gut

Museum of Homelessness, LondonThis mostly alfresco exhibition expertly unpicks how homeless and nomadic people have been persecuted over the centuriesA trim caravan sits in an idyllic garden in the grounds of a former gatehouse. Its cosy interior is decked with a cornucopia of crafts: pastel-coloured bunting, felt embroidery, a bright rag rug, plumply immaculate cushions. On the sideboard is a small display of pristine china. It feels like a glamping retreat or a chi-chi refuge from the Chelsea

entertainment  May 25, 2026

The Guardian Culture

‘Bowie compared us to T Rex. Couldn’t get any better’: the Mekons on how they made Where Were You?

‘It’s about loneliness, really. It was the total opposite of that “It’s Friday night, let’s have sex” macho mentality that was in most rock music at the time’Most of the people who started the Mekons and Gang of Four were on the same fine art course at Leeds University. In December 1976 we went to see the Anarchy tour at the nearby polytechnic. I liked the Sex Pistols but the Clash, in their paint-spattered clothes, sounded particularly great. It was the first time I saw a band and thought: “Tha

entertainment  May 25, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Fatiha El-Ghorri: Cockney Stacking Doll review – Taskmaster star’s endearing, earthy tour of the East End

Leicester Square theatre, LondonThe comic delivers gags about her life and neighbourhood with choice descriptions and brutal punchlines‘What comes out of here,” says Fatiha El-Ghorri, indicating her mouth, “and this” – how she presents to the world – “don’t match.” From that contrast – a kindly-seeming woman in a hijab peddling gobby East End standup – this Taskmaster graduate and rising standup star draws much of her comic power. She’s a British Moroccan Muslim from Hackney, where she grew up g

entertainment  May 25, 2026

The Guardian Culture

From racy riders to romantic rivals: Jilly Cooper’s best books – ranked!

The second series of Rivals has put the bestselling author’s brand of saucy jollity back on screen, but what is her bonkbuster nonpareil? In the last of Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire Chronicles – her epic, engrossing sagas of bucolic life among horse-riding poshos – Rupert Campbell-Black, template-handsome cad turned loving husband, is now (I did the maths) 67. Taggie has cancer, which is bracing, since the Chronicles as a whole rarely brush with mortality. I was astonished to learn that Cooper did 15

entertainment  May 25, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Sugar review – Bob Mould’s reunited band still in a sweet spot between noise and melody

O2 Kentish Town Forum, LondonAfter three unlikely Top 10 albums in the 90s, the trio are back – and on the basis of this rapid-fire set, you hope they’ll stick aroundBob Mould has never seemed to have much interest in looking back. The bridges to a Hüsker Dü reunion were burned long before drummer and songwriter Grant Hart died in 2017; the notion that Mould might revive Sugar, the band who scored three unlikely UK Top 10 albums of ferocious alt-rock in the mid-90s, seemed ridiculous. But here w

entertainment  May 25, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Food orders and phone bills: Jimi Hendrix memorabilia to go on display in London

Exclusive: Exhibition to include letters, work permits and dry cleaning tickets that reveal little moments of domesticity in rock icon’s lifeWhen Jimi Hendrix lived in a bohemian London flat in the 1960s, he had little need for its kitchen as he had meals sent up from Mr Love, a groovy restaurant on the ground floor of his building.While celebrities were downstairs, dining at heart-shaped tables and served by waitresses in hot pants, the American rock musician was upstairs, tucking into steaks a

entertainment  May 25, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Anita Rani celebrates awesome women: best podcasts of the week

The presenter meets remarkable public figures, starting with a lovely talk with writer-actor Meera Syal. Plus, a vital deep dive into US supreme court justice Neil Gorsuch Continue reading...

entertainment  May 25, 2026

The Guardian Culture

‘My first drag turn? As Karen Carpenter in hotpants!’ La Voix on swinger cruises, Strictly – and blazing into musicals

From Drag Race to Eurovision to Strictly, La Voix is going stratospheric. And Chris Dennis, the man behind the crimson coiffure, is thrilled. He talks about his cruise ship highs, doing panto with Cilla – and starring in Annie‘I’ve done more cruises than Jane McDonald,” says Chris Dennis with a hoot. About 130 in all, he reckons, which his agent said surpassed McDonald, the most famous cruise ship singer there is. You won’t find Dennis’s name on any billing, though, and most of the thousands of

entertainment  May 25, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Paul McCartney: The Boys of Dungeon Lane review – at 83, his gift for melody still astounds

(MPL/Capitol)From nostalgic returns to his Liverpool childhood to a crazed Glastonbury fantasia, these are songs written with real purpose and a master’s finesseThe rock legend in the autumn of their years who chooses to release a new album is well advised to get themselves an angle. If the music that made you legendary was written and recorded long ago – and is highly unlikely to be displaced in the public’s affections by anything you do now – it’s good to have something that suggests a sense o

entertainment  May 24, 2026

The Guardian Culture

From Gilead to Ladyland: how the rebellious women of literature offer hope in dark times

After visiting an island brothel in Bangladesh, the novelist was inspired to write an imagined uprising. She explores the radical fictional worlds where women have the powerIn the spring of 2024, I am finally able to visit Banishanta, the island in southern Bangladesh that has been haunting my dreams. When I arrive I find it is little more than a long patch of grey mud, with a string of flimsy huts lining a craggy shore. Thirteen years earlier, I was on a boat on my way to the Sun

entertainment  May 24, 2026

The Guardian Culture

‘People are like: you’re a crackpot’: how Sam Campbell became comedy’s oddball superstar

Having enjoyed breakout fame on Taskmaster and Last One Laughing, the subversive Australian comic has been handed the reins of his own, very strange sitcom. Get ready for feet animations and a character called Super-Breast …The premise of Make That Movie, Australian comedian Sam Campbell’s deeply strange new Channel 4 series, is not easy to describe. A show-within-a-show, it stars its creator as an alternative Sam Campbell: rather than his real-life idiosyncratic standup self, he’s a pompous dir

entertainment  May 24, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Dear England: James Graham’s rousing, joyful football drama will make you cry and shout at the TV

This stellar adaptation of James Graham’s award-winning play is a stirring take on national identity – even if not all the actors look like the real footballers. Put it this way, Wayne Rooney will be very pleased indeedTo watch Dear England (Sunday, 9pm, BBC One) – the BBC’s stellar adaptation of James Graham’s Olivier award-winning play – you must first understand the incomparable damage to the national psyche that arose from Gareth Southgate missing a penalty in the Euro 96 semi-final. For tho

entertainment  May 23, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Boards of Canada: Inferno review – after 13 years away, their prodigal return is a big disappointment

(Warp)The Scottish electronic duo remain hugely influential – but their new album’s interrogation of religion is dubious, and the drum programming is worse stillThis is the first album in 13 years from Boards of Canada, and from the opening notes – an analogue synth rising and falling like a sound effect in a forgotten 1960s radio play – you’re thrust back into one of the most instantly recognisable worlds in electronic music.From 1995 debut EP Twoism onward, across four LPs and four more EPs, t

entertainment  May 23, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Phyllida Barlow: Disruptor review – sexy latex and gobs of gum as a stately home gets trashed

Wolterton, Norfolk From an explosion of plywood chairs to something akin to bubblegum stuck to the walls, this imaginative exhibition reverberates with Barlow’s punk irreverenceWolterton Hall is folded so deeply into the countryside of the Bure Valley that you can’t even see the grand Palladian mansion when you enter the gates to the estate. This was once one of the four power houses of Norfolk, built by Thomas Ripley for Horatio Walpole. Inside, Wolterton is dripping in 18th-century treasures,

entertainment  May 22, 2026

The Guardian Culture

What am I bid for a blown-up van? The bizarre art auction aiming to build an eco power station in Reform-held Clacton

They blew up a van full of banknotes. They sold high-end Ukrainian vodka to Selfridges. Now art duo Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn are auctioning their past works – to launch their most ambitious project to dateThis Saturday, artists Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn are auctioning off their work from the past decade and a half. The reason? To help fund a community-led renewable power station in Nigel Farage’s Clacton constituency. Former YBA Gavin Turk will be wielding the gavel and the couple hop

entertainment  May 22, 2026

The Guardian Culture

‘The days I had to have sex with randoms, I thought thank God!’ Jamie Bell on eye-popping drama Half Man

His starring role in Richard Gadd’s brutal toxic masculinity series is a far cry from his days as Billy Elliot. The actor opens up about gruelling shoots, dancing on toilets – and why he can’t ever just chill outNot many actors are relieved when they have to film an eye-poppingly explicit sex scene, but that was the case with Jamie Bell on Half Man. His role involved chemsex in saunas, dogging in car parks and illicit quickies in library loos. “Honestly, I was so grateful to be shooting that stu

entertainment  May 22, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Tosca review – Puccini’s high-octane bloodbath bonanza makes for a shocking festival kick-off

Glyndebourne, SussexCaitlin Gotimer’s Tosca goes from 0-60 in mere moments while the London Philharmonic unlock the barely contained violence in Ted Huffman’s long-awaited exceptional stagingGiacomo Puccini died only a decade before the first Glyndebourne festival opened. 92 years later, Tosca – global operatic blockbuster and the work once derided as a “shabby little shocker” – has finally made its Glyndebourne debut, opening the 2026 festival with a high-octane bloodbath presided over by direc

entertainment  May 22, 2026

The Guardian Culture

‘Really entertaining in a horrible way’: the indestructible appeal of Tosca

With its screams, sex, bells and bloodshed Puccini’s opera was initially derided as a noisy disaster. Ahead of Glyndebourne’s first ever production, we look the ‘shabby little shocker’ that’s become one of opera’s most bankable masterpiecesGustav Mahler hated it. Its publisher was convinced it would be a commercial disaster. Critics complained it was mostly just “noise” and predicted that it would quickly be forgotten. But more than 125 years since Tosca’s premiere in January 1900, Giacomo Pucci

entertainment  May 21, 2026